Dell's PowerEdge T310 is a sophisticated server for the SMB that has serious mission-critical server needs. It's built to deal with sensitive data or large, highly trafficked websites or high-transaction databases at the SMB level. If your business' data fits this bill, this is an option for you. If not, it's overkill.

Dell's PowerEdge T310 server is marketed as an SMB serverand it's a whole lot of server for a small business. This beefy server is ideal for mission-critical operations like financial databases, high volume e-mail servers, or web servers performing lots of transactions. It can also support virtualization, though it only supports Microsoft's Hyper-V and some versions of VMware ESX and ESX1. This server delivers enterprise features to the SMB such as high availability, fault tolerance, and embedded management capabilities. It's a powerful server, and it's priced accordingly. The highest-end enterprise features will set you back $4,496.00 list, slightly pricier than HP's Proliant ML330 G6 ($2,624, 4 stars) which has similar features.

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The unit I reviewed came with Intel's quad-core Xeon x3470 2.93 GHz processor, four SAS drives configured with RAID 10 (which is a combination of disk mirroring and striping) and 8 GB of 1333 MHz dual ranked UDIMM memorythe memory is expandable up to 23 GB. The server is also available in less pricier configurations starting at $549.00.

Features and Management
The PowerEdge T310 is a one-socket tower form factor. This is not a server you are going to want running near your workspace, at least with four drives installed. It's rather noisy, especially on boot up. We found the same thing with last year's Dell PowerEdge T110. The T310 also is a big tower measuring 17.3 x 8.6 x 20.5 inches. It's heavy, too, tipping the scales at a good 50 pounds.

The chassis has a total of 8 USB ports, a VGA port and a serial port. Several physical security features are built on the case: a system coin lock under the cover latch, as well as a bezel lock on the front bezel (keys for the locks are stored behind the front bezel).

One design feature I really like: once the server is running, the power switch becomes useless. It can't be pressed accidently or otherwise and kill the running server. That's good, because the proper way to shut down a server is through the OS. I also like the Intrusion Switch, which beeps to alert users when the cover is open.

Management
There's a lot happening with this server in terms of management. On boot up, administrators can opt to access the Unified Server Configurator, a console from which to perform firmware updates, configure RAID, and manage other system settings. Embedded management is handled with the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC), a system management hardware and software solution that utilizes the integrated system-on-chip microprocessor. The Lifecycle Controller is an additional feature delivered by iDRAC which aids in delivering faster server deployment and update capabilities from a bare-metal state.

As the server boots, the screen displays several utility options you can choose fromalmost too many. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the options fly by too fast by default during boot-up to read all of them at onceeven though boot-up itself is rather slow. I clocked an average of 3 ½ minutes and even longer for shutdown, due to an abundance of running Windows services.

There are additional management options on an accompanying CD. The Dell Systems Management and Documentation DVD and the Dell Management console DVD includes the Dell Systems Build and Update Utility, OpenManage Server Administrator, yet another management console and an Active Directory snap-in.

That's an awful lot of management options scattered about. I understand some utilities like configuring RAID may need to reside in BIOS, but why not have more centralized management already installed with the server? While I appreciate that Dell was generous with the options, the typical SMB user will be much more like to be concerned with ease of useall these option are overkill.

Performance
With the T310 configuration I received, I expected decent performance and was not disappointed. The Intel Xeon x3470 undoubtedly helped the PowerEdge score higher benchmarks results than we found with HP's ML330 server. Using the Geekbench 2.1.6 64-bit utility, the PowerEdge scored a decent 8,428 versus the ML330's 5,430. I also tested using Cinebench r10's 64-bit CPU test. The PowerEdge cranked out a score of 16,004, versus the ML330's 10,975.

We were impressed last year with the results the ML330 gave using the IOzone 3.321 network file system benchmark utility. The ML330 managed to achieve 2.38 GBps on reads and 3.28 on writes. The PowerEdge was on par with writes, churning out 3GBps, but absolutely excelled on reads at 6 GBpsone of the highest read rates we have seen in the labs for SMB servers. A server with reads this high and good performance on writes would excel as a high-volume database server for an SMB.

Does the PowerEdge Have the Edge?
The PowerEdge T310 is a scaled down Enterprise server at the highest-end configuration I tested. While the pricing for this configuration may be out of reach for most SMBs, consider the price an investment for ideal performance and a high-level of protection for the most critical business data. For businesses that harbor lots of sensitive data or have databases with high levels of transactions, it's worth the price.

Samara Lynn has nearly twenty years experience in Information Technology; most recently as IT Director at a major New York City healthcare facility. She has a Bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, several technology certifications, and...

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